- Everyman CEO Alex Scrimgeour leaves with immediate effect
- This follows a poor trading update on 10 December and the finance director resigning on 15 December
- The cinema chain has faced competition from streaming platforms, consumers watching their spending, and rival chains upgrading their estates
- All eyes now on private equity shareholder Blue Coast to see if it makes a takeover bid
Dan Coatsworth, head of markets at AJ Bell, comments:
“The curtains have fallen on Alex Scrimgeour’s time as CEO of cinema group Everyman. He had to deal with a succession of crises from day one, and it proved to be Mission: Impossible. The share price fell by 76% during his tenure and time had run out. Everyman’s board now needs to find a new leading actor and reboot the company.
“Scrimgeour started in January 2021 with the immediate task of nursing the cinema chain back to health post-pandemic. He then had to contend with the impact of a cost-of-living crisis causing people to shut their wallets. All the while, Everyman was fighting a structural shift in the market with people increasingly waiting for films to come onto streaming rather than watching them on the big screen.
“While the cinema industry did manage to regain some of its sparkle post-pandemic, Everyman lost its edge in the market.
“Once a unique proposition, offering posh seats and fancy food to lure in the punters, Everyman’s rivals have since copied many of its winning elements and left it for dust. The leading chains Vue and Odeon have installed reclining seats, bringing comfort to the mass market, while they also rolled out bars inside their cinemas.
“Scrimgeour declared Everyman to be a ‘truly differentiated proposition’ when he was appointed five years ago. Fast forward to the present day, and that differentiation has gone up in smoke.
“It’s fair to say that 2025 wasn’t a golden year for new film releases, making matters worse for Everyman. Its recent profit warning was blamed on a weak fourth quarter film state, and the release schedule for the next few months doesn’t instil much optimism.
“Everyman has now lost both its chief executive and its finance director over the past fortnight; the latter having resigned on 15 December. That’s unfortunate timing and means the pressure is on to find a new leadership team fast.
“Blue Coast Private Equity owns 29.2% of Everyman and might have played a role in pushing out the CEO, potentially frustrated with the lack of strategic and share price progress. It will be interesting to see if Blue Coast tries to take the company out on the cheap, opting to remove it from the public spotlight to enact a turnaround programme.
“One stumbling block to such a move would be asset manager Gresham House who owns nearly 10% of Everyman and wouldn’t let the business be gobbled up for anything less than fair value. Gresham House deploys a private equity investment style in public markets, and it might be called upon to suggest candidates for the CEO and FD roles.”
